Muireann Bradley

Coughlan's, Douglas St.

Wed 10th Feb, 7:30 pm

Tickets on sale Friday Oct 30th at 10am 
Muireann Bradley makes music that feels timeless. The 19-year-old blues guitar prodigy has earned acclaim for her intricate fingerstyle playing, transforming technical brilliance intoperformances of remarkable warmth, clarity, and emotional depth. 
Her forthcomingBlackwood Pew EP, due in October via Fontana Records/Verve Forecast, marks a defining new chapter. The new collection follows her acclaimed 2024 debut I Kept These Old Blues and introduces Muireann as a songwriter for the first time, pairing her original compositions with fresh reworkings of classics that feel every bit as enduring as the tradition that inspired them.
Blackwood Pew opens outward in every sense. With contributions from producer Declan Gaffney and Ella Walker (aka Wildes), the EP broadens its author's sonic palette with richlylayered bass, drums and slide guitar, played by an array of top session players and keys by producer Declan Gaffney. From the themes of longing that shape ‘Not Going Back’ to theevocative, Velvet Underground-inspired ‘Clementine’, the record draws on a lifetime immersed in ragtime blues, American old-time and country sounds, alongside the Irish tradmusic Muireann grew up with. It feels like a door opening onto new ground; familiar in its roots, yet stepping into something more expansive.While working on the EP in Hackney, Bradley arrived with the momentum of touring internationally, writing through and into her growth as both human and artist. She recorded the new songs on a handcrafted guitar built for her by Steve Brown of Wallace Brown Guitars in Gippsland in Victoria Australia who, having seen her perform, was inspired to build her a custom instrument. It features Australian Blackwood back and sides reclaimed from a 200-year-old church pew from Tasmania, a King Billy Pine top also from that island, and a distinct copper pickguard. The guitar has become her constant companion on stage and in the studio - so much so it gave rise to the name of the EP.
It’s this level of connection that Muireann’s live shows consistently draw, first building a devoted following through YouTube before translating that intimacy to the stage. She hassold out headline gigs on both sides of the Atlantic and was handpicked by Fontaines D.C.’s Tom Coll and folk collective Broadside Hacks to top the bill at Féile Moth, an Irish cultural festival in London. On television, just weeks after turning 17, Muireann captivated the studio audience at Jools Holland’s Hootenanny with her spellbinding take on blues standard ‘Candyman’, performing in front of Ruby Turner and Sir Rod Stewart, before later delivering a knockout rendition of Memphis Minnie’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’ on The Late Late Show.
Muireann explains that for “a very long time”, even as her trajectory expanded across the UK festival circuit with appearances at Green Man, End Of The Road and Bearded Theory, shequestioned whether audiences would “want to engage with this kind of music” in a live setting. Growing up in County Donegal with no contemporary reference points – she had“never, ever met” anyone who shared her tastes – that relative solitude became the foundation of her craft, shaped in her childhood bedroom with the encouragement of her father, whose love of the greats seemed to pass to her by osmosis as he introduced her to Tom Waits, early acoustic Bob Dylan and Irish guitarists Arty McGlynn and John Doyle. 
Raised in what she calls a “music house”, Muireann’s father kept a dedicated room lined with guitars and stacks of CDs (Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt) which she would sneak into and pick up his prized vintage Gibsons; he’d pretend to be annoyed,but was secretly delighted that his daughter was so intrigued. When the pandemic sidelined
Muireann’s interest in boxing and Brazilian jiu?jitsu, she turned to the guitar to channel that discipline into mastering a demanding, dexterous fingerpicking style. “There’s a lot of pressure when you go into a boxing ring, and that prepared me for going onstage,” Muireann explains. “I also really like the challenge of learning this kind of playing style. It’s difficult and not many people play it. I get a real kick out of figuring things out by ear. I've always been the kind of person that's really good at locking themselves away and doing something until they get it.”
At this point in her burgeoning career, as Muireann spends chunks of each year travelling, Blackwood Pew arrives with a sense of homecoming. Her world has opened up – from trips to North Carolina’s MerleFest, where she and her dad met a number of bluegrass greats – yet the idea of home has become something like an inner glow: sparked by taking in the rolling coastlines of County Donegal and reminiscing about the county’s folk festivals; by hearing a local accent, or walking past the Balor Arts Centre where she performed in youth musicals.
For Muireann, being back in Ireland is “grounding” as her profile grows, an anchor against the nagging anticipation of constant change. The downtime it affords has also opened up herimagination: more recently she has engaged with film, especially black comedies like Withnail and I, and that influence leans into the impressionistic imagery that runs through‘Clementine’. Elsewhere, she writes from a blend of open?to?interpretation narratives and personal experience, while ‘Not Going Back’ was born from not overthinking the words andletting the mood of the music guide her. ‘Dancing On My Grave’, which features a hypnotic, haunting layered vocal, began life as a spare guitar part before Muireann interwove lyricsinspired by the story of Delta blues great Robert Johnson’s death by poisoning in 1938.
While I Kept These Old Blues revolved around revitalising other people’s songs and putting her ‘in the know’ among record collectors, festival bookers and genre devotees, Blackwood Pew widens the frame, as Muireann wants her own material to eventually sit alongside the canon. The EP, therefore, is the product of a passionate storyteller who values the graft ofslow, attentive work and trusts it to bear fruit and carry her towards greatness.“I’m excited to record more of my own songs,” she concludes. “I want to get them out there and see what people think, to make more albums and keep moving forward, developing my style and my songwriting.” A new, pivotal chapter now opens for Muireann, as she begins to chart where her curiosity might lead and the possibilities ahead feel abundant.